The Development of Executive Functions in Play Contexts

This chapter presents an experimental study of the development of executive functions (EF) in young children in play contexts by two groups of researchers in Australia and Russia. Both studies had a common purpose—to investigate the development of EF in children in specific play contexts—the Playworlds in the first research project and the sociodramatic play context in the second. Both projects took a cultural-historical approach to the psychological development of the child as a common theoretical basis and, were based on a common theoretical vision of the nature of EF and their development. Despite the common theoretical approach, in the first study EF was considered more as imbedded in social practices, whereas in the second research, the analysis was built on a general cultural-historical analytic-genetical model (Veresov in Subjectivity within cultural-historical approach: Theory, methodology and research. Springer Singapore, pp. 61–83, 2019). In addition, the second experimental study was focused more on analysis of the process of development of EF using theoretical concepts of the social situation of development, perezhivanie and drama.